His father had killed Perrotte.
His father.
He closed his eyes. He wanted to suggest that she didn’t really remember, though he knew she did. He wanted to suggest that maybe she was lying. But he knew she wouldn’t.
It made so many things make sense. It answered why Saint Melor had chosen him. His family owed a debt, for the sins of his father.
He slumped down to his bottom, eyes still closed, back against the guard tower’s wall. He heard a thud as Perrotte slid into the same position beside him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Perrotte said. “It’s been hard to be honest with you, while I’ve been hiding that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Sir Bleyz and the rebellion, too. And I want you to know, you were right. I should not bring war to the people. I have forgotten the madness of the War of the League.”
Sand ignored that. “How did it happen? How did you die?”
Perrotte told him about the scented slippers and scented gloves, and how Gilles had prepared them for her. Every word seemed to fall through Sand’s chest and strike his heart, one sickening blow after another.
Eventually, the story ended. They sat there in silence for a moment, until Sand heard his name called from outside the castle. He forced himself to his feet, to look down. Agnote was there, hands cupped around her mouth. His father was nowhere in sight.
He shouted down, “If they sent you to convince us to leave the castle, tell them: We are trapped by the thorns. If they sent you for any other reason, you can tell us tomorrow. I love you, Agnote. Tell Avenie and Annick that I miss them.”
“Sand!” Agnote called. “Come back!”
But Sand had turned away. He left the tower, and did not look back.
29
Head
SAND FLED, AND PERROTTE LET HIM GO. POSSIBLY, she wanted to be alone with her thoughts as much as he did. Sand wasn’t sure that he’d done the right thing, telling his parents that Perrotte was alive, but he didn’t know what else he could have done. He hated lies of omission, more now than ever.
He went to the smithy and restacked the bricks of his forge. That made him feel much better. His mind stumped the same question over and over in a tired, worn-out pattern, like mules circling a grinding stone: How can I fix this? How can I fix this? How can I fix this?
Bring down the thorn hedge and go to war. Leave the thorn hedge and be destroyed. One path led to war. One path led to injustice. Both ended in Perrotte’s death, probably, and likely enough, his own as well.
And . . . his own father had killed Perrotte. Maybe Papa was coerced, maybe he was lied to, maybe he was bribed, but the guilt had been on his face, and Sand didn’t know how to bear it, or how Perrotte could bear being around him, the son of her executioner. She had been so broken in the castle’s treasury when she told him about her murder.
He had to fix her.
How did you fix a person, though?
“Everything can be mended,” he muttered. He drew just short of punching a wall. It was so unlike him, and unlike every smith he knew. Smiths were gentle folk; all their aggressions were spent on shaping metal.
He thought about firing up the forge then, and beating his frustrations into something useful, but he wouldn’t mend anything that might bring down the thorns faster.
His feet knew better what to do than he did, and he found himself in the chapel. He approached the relics.
He opened Sainte Trifine’s silver reliquary briefly, and stared in grim wonder at the sight of the beating heart. He closed it.
Anything could be mended. Everything could be mended. The heart was proof. He could mend Perrotte. His father. The whole situation with the Countess. He just had to figure out how.
The other reliquary drew him, the golden box that held Saint Melor’s fragmented skull. The story about the saint’s silver hand and bronze foot tugged at his imagination. If he were to mend the skull, what metal should he use? If bronze was for feet and silver was for hands, then wouldn’t gold be the metal for a head?
“You’re not mending anything, remember, Sand? The hedge.” He paused and shook his head at himself. “And Perrotte’s out of sight for a few minutes, and you’re talking to yourself again.”
Talking to himself was bad, but Sand had to admit that the hedge wouldn’t fall because he mended one more thing in the castle. The amount of mending he had left to do in order to bring down the hedge was . . . No—certainly one more thing wouldn’t matter.
And the possible benefit was enormous. In the stories, Saint Melor’s head spoke. If Sand mended it, quite possibly it would speak again. Sainte Trifine’s beating heart was proof of the presence of something, but it could not answer his questions.
If anyone was the master smith of this situation, it had to be the saint who brought him to this castle. Saint Melor could show Sand where to apply the sledge. Saint Melor had to know how to mend everything. Why else would Sand have been brought here, if not for this?
REMOVING THE SKULL FROM the chapel felt like a kind of sacrilege, but so did setting up a workshop in the chapel. In the end, with slow footsteps and a great deal of reverence, Sand carried the skull of Saint Melor in its reliquary down to the smithy and perched it on his anvil. He built a hot fire around a partially intact, thick crucible that he filled with broken-up bits of the golden reliquary, and waited for them to melt in the blistering heat.
In the meantime, he arranged the pieces of the skull carefully, envisioning how he would fit each one back together. The skull had not merely been broken in half—it had broken along every major seam of the skull, into twelve large pieces.
The whole time he worked, the back of his neck prickled, and at times, he thought he felt other hands guiding his own. The invisible hand on the right felt colder than the one on the left, and Sand shivered. Immediately, the sensation died away, but it returned as he moved on to the next piece.
When at last the gold was molten, Sand cautiously dipped the edge of one skull fragment in the gold, and then pushed it against the matching edge of the other piece. He waited for the gold to cool. The mend held, probably more due to his mending magic than any skill or knowledge: the pieces stuck together, with a seam of gold running between them. Carefully, he did this with the remaining pieces. The jaw, however, needed to move, yes? So Sand quickly tapped out a pair of golden hinges with a very small hammer, and then made tiny steel nails with which to attach the hinges. With great delicacy, he hinged the jaw.
He carried the skull back to the chapel, where he knelt, gazing upon the mended skull, waiting for it to speak.
It did not speak.
Sand crossed himself and prayed, then waited.
The skull did not suddenly plump with flesh. Sand was glad of that. There were no eyes to open, and so Sand could not guess if any spirit were filling the void. And while he stared at the skull, he realized that hinging the jaw had been pointless, since the whole of the skull sat on the jaw, and nothing short of a true miracle would allow the jaw to move and speak. A human head, he realized, mounted on the neck and allowed the jaw to dangle and close at the will of the speaking human. If he rested his own head atop his chin, he would not be able to speak.
He stood to leave, berating himself for his foolishness. Then it occurred to him: He should ask a question.
He turned back to the altar. “Saint Melor, hear me!” He cleared his throat, feeling ridiculous. “I have a question. How can I mend my problems?”
He felt silly. He really did.
But then the skull spoke.
The jaw did not move. He’d absolutely wasted his time with the jaw. But in spite of that, a voice did emanate from the skull, a voice that he heard not through the air, but from within the bones of his own skull—deep, deep inside his ears.
Some things are not meant to be mended.
The sound made his head itch, but deep inside where he could not reach. He dug his finger into his ear canal, but came out with only a bit of wax and no relief from the itch
ing. He swallowed and gaped and yawned, even going so far as to stick a finger to scratch at his tonsils—but this only made him gag. It was maddening, but eventually, the itching faded enough to bear it. Sand shook his head, like a dog shaking off water.
“Some things are not meant to be mended?” Sand asked. “But then why did you—or Sainte Trifine, if it was she—bring me here, if not to mend?”
Some things are not for you to mend.
Again, the itching drove Sand nearly mad. He rubbed his throat, swallowing heavily, and forced himself to cough.
“You don’t understand,” Sand said finally. “Perrotte—you brought me here to mend Perrotte, didn’t you? And this castle? Well, I can’t fix them alone! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how to make anything better!”
Some things cannot be mended.
Sand put his hand over his ears, trying to block out the itching voice, but it was no use. He kept his fingers out of his ears and mouth, however, having learned—if it could be called learning—the futility of that. Though he felt hard-pressed not to chew on one of the chapel’s candles, for he thought that the lumps of wax would feel very pleasant on the way down, and that they might scratch the itch within him.
He left the candles alone. “Can’t you at least tell me why?” he asked, plaintive.
The skull didn’t answer.
“Why was I brought here, when I am useless?”
The skull didn’t answer.
“Can’t you tell me anything?” Sand raged, climbing to his feet.
Finally, the skull spoke again.
Some things just are.
“Argh!”
Sand spun around. Perrotte stood at the door of the chapel, holding her ears.
“What is that? And why is it doing what it’s doing?”
“It’s Saint Melor’s head,” Sand said. Then, “It’s, ah, talking.”
The annoyance faded from Perrotte’s face. Her eyes went wide, and she came forward as though pulled by an invisible rope.
She knelt beside Sand, yanking his arm to bring him back to kneeling too, and assumed an attitude of quiet prayer.
Sand braced himself for the skull to speak again, but the moments slipped past, and the skull was as silent as Perrotte.
Finally, he nudged her with his elbow. “If you want the skull to talk, you have to ask it a question.”
“But that is not what she has prayed for,” a voice said from behind them.
30
Saints
BESIDE HER, SAND YELPED IN SURPRISE. PERROTTE rose trembling to her feet and turned to face the voice.
Two figures stood in the dimness of the chapel, a faint glow emanating from their white raiment. A woman with dark hair stood beside a boy about their own age. For a flicker of a moment, the strangers’ aspects changed; shadowy scars appeared across both their necks, and one of the boy’s hands gleamed silver. But the signs of their bodily infirmities fled as soon as they appeared, and Perrotte half wondered if she had imagined them, then decided the marks were meant to ensure that the visitors would be recognized.
Sainte Trifine and Saint Melor.
Sand moaned, very quietly, and crossed himself. He’d recognized the saints too.
Crossing herself seemed like a good idea, actually. Perrotte did so too.
“Why did you bring me here?” Sand blurted.
But the saints did not appear offended; they just regarded Sand with eyes both calm and dark. “You know why,” Sainte Trifine chided.
Sand shook his head. “I have ideas why. I don’t know.”
Saint Melor didn’t appear to like this response. “Knowing was never promised to you.”
Sand subsided. Sainte Trifine was kinder, her expression warm and sympathetic. “You know more than you think,” she told him.
Perrotte shuffled her feet, and now the saints gazed upon her. Their attention was not comfortable. She took a deep breath. “I prayed for the removal of the thorns,” she said at last.
“You did?” Sand exclaimed.
Perrotte spoke to the saints and him both. “I did not expect to receive a visitation.”
Saint Melor’s eyes remained on her, assessing and impartial. Her scalp prickled. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting.
But it was Sainte Trifine who spoke. “The thorns are none of our doing,” she said.
Perrotte’s breath hitched. “They’re not? But—you destroyed the castle—you raised the thorns.”
Sainte Trifine shook her head. “It is true that I sundered the castle, when your stepmother laid her hand over my heart and swore that she had not killed you—”
“But she did kill me,” Perrotte said fiercely. “It was Gilles’s hand, but her will.”
Sainte Trifine’s face was rueful and sorrowing. “I do not think it was her will. I confess I should have looked into her heart then, but the lie, the false oath taken on my heart, angered me so; a lie meant to cover the slaughter of a Cygne daughter no less . . . It was my impetuous doing. I have long regretted it.”
Perrotte rubbed her forehead with her thumbs, frowning. “I don’t understand!” she cried. “She murdered me. You punished her. What is there to regret?”
“She was punished, but my actions also punished an entire generation of your family and your vassals,” Sainte Trifine said. “Who knows what courses their lives would have taken if I had done differently? I did not know that the sundering would be compounded by the thorns, and that being cut off from the wealth of the countship would plunge the countryside into such poverty—which in turn caused your sister to marry a French prince for his wealth, and thus lose Bertaèyn one more inch of its independence from France. I have much to make up for.”
Perrotte’s thoughts were frozen.
“That is why,” Sainte Trifine said, her pale hand extending to Melor, “we brought Sand to this place, and we enhanced certain of his abilities—we gave him mending magic.”
Perrotte felt Sand tense beside her, rocking forward on his feet. He’d gotten his answer after all—and more.
“But the thorns are neither of ours,” Sainte Trifine said.
“Who, then?” Perrotte demanded. “Who has trapped us here?”
Saint Melor said, “The thorns are from the earth you were laid in, Perrotte.”
“Wait.” Perrotte’s hands flew to her cheeks. “The thorns are mine? I control the thorns?”
Saint Melor shook his head. “The thorns are not one person’s magic. Do not read intention in the thorns. They are a wilderness created by rage and sorrow.”
“My rage, though—my sorrow?” Perrotte crossed her arms, holding her upper body tight against the sudden trembling that had overtaken her.
“No. Not just yours,” Saint Melor said.
“Not only rage and sorrow, but fear, as well, and guilt,” Sainte Trifine said. “The thorns grew not from your feelings alone, Perrotte. There is more grief and rage and fear in this castle than one girl could create. Many people grew these thorns. But only from within the castle can they be taken down.”
“By mending things,” Sand said.
Saint Melor turned his head with regal slowness, and Perrotte remembered: Saint Melor would have been a king had his uncle not stolen his inheritance. “Mending the castle is an important part of it, Sand, but it is not the only part.”
Sand’s lips thinned as though he were thinking hard. He nodded stoically. Perrotte wanted to poke him. Did he understand what Melor meant, or was he just accepting that he couldn’t understand in his Sand-like way?
Sainte Trifine said, “You are so angry, Perrotte, and you have much to forgive.”
“Forgive?” Perrotte exploded. The saint was right, she was angry. None of this was fair. The world wasn’t fair. Armies weren’t fair. Revenge wasn’t fair. Jannet wasn’t fair. Her stupid father wasn’t fair.
No one was blameless in this, but most of the time, she was angriest at her father for marrying Jannet, for letting Jannet kill her, for being dead now.
> And Bleyz. Bleyz must have done something very wrong, for Jannet’s army to be camped out in the asparagus fields.
And Gilles, who had let himself be duped by Jannet—for he must have been duped—how could he have been so stupid?
Every once in a while, she was even angry at her mother for dying, and leaving an empty place for Jannet to occupy.
“You chose anger over Heaven, Perrotte. You would not forget and move on,” Saint Melor said, and placed his thumb on her forehead, between her eyebrows.
Her vision blacked out, and memory flicked through her mind like lightning bolts: The fields of white lilies, the banks of the slow-fast river, and the souls who drank and forgot.
And: The red-mawed woman, and the white tree, and Perrotte’s refusal to drink.
And: The dark-haired woman who came to her in the marsh, the red seed that glowed with life, and the reminder of her mother’s love.
The memories faded, and Perrotte found herself standing with her eyes shut, rocking back and forth on her feet slightly with her heartbeat.
“It is time for you to break with your past, as you should have broken with it when first you died,” Trifine said.
Perrotte opened her eyes, flinching. I don’t want to die, Perrotte thought. Her heart was a fist. This was the end. She’d never been meant to be resurrected, and now she must undo the mistake.
“No, Perrotte,” Trifine said kindly. “We do not ask you to face death again now, but to face life. With forgiveness.”
“How do you—?”
“I can see into human hearts, Perrotte.”
She knew—she knew in the core of her—that the saints spoke the truth, even though she didn’t understand everything they said. But there was something else she knew.
“I don’t want to forgive,” she admitted. “I can’t. It will—” She broke off.
“Forgiveness is not death,” Trifine said. “It is life.”
“For who? Whose life? Forgiving allows people to get away with murder.”
The Castle Behind Thorns Page 17
